Dragon Age: Inquisition and Keep-Building: More Emphasis on Strategy

roseofbattle

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Apr 18, 2011
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Dragon Age: Inquisition and Keep-Building: More Emphasis on Strategy

Players can capture enemy keeps to unlock new quests in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Nobody but everyone ready for Dragon Age: Inquisition expects the inquisition and resulting takeover of keeps. Further revealed today was a new mechanic in which players can capture enemy keeps to unlock quests, customize the keeps, earn cash, and rebuild. According to Dragon Age: Inquisition's producer, the game uses more tactics to throw in a greater sense of leadership for the player.

In Dragon Age: Inquisition the player is the Inquisitor. How this affects interactions with other characters is greatly influenced by the player character's race, of which the player can choose from human, elf, dwarf, or qunari. As the Inquisitor, the player can take control of keeps across the multiple regions. The more a player puts into a keep, the more rewards come out of it. For example, by rebuilding a fallen colossus, OPM notes, troop morale will increase. A new management system gives the player control over running the keeps and overseeing trade.

Watching a demo, OPM observed how combat in Dragon Age: Inquisition is revamped. While still very similar to combat in previous games, Inquisition's battles "seem less dependent on length of health bar" and more on abilities and positioning. Three years will have passed when Inquisition launches since Dragon Age II's release, a title that was not as well-received by the general playing audience. In that time, the developers have thought hard on what to include in Inquisition.

"I think we've reached a point now where we have the technology on the gen 4 platforms, the higher platforms, and even on gen 3 when you downgrade some of the graphics...combined with the new engine which we've rebuilt the entire Dragon Age game in, it gives us the opportunity to bring some of these more interesting gameplay experiences in, so strategy, keeps, tactics, stuff like that, and throw it all into one big mix," producer Cameron Lee said. "Which I find exciting personally, as a hardcore RPG player - to have that really strong story along with open world kind of experiences and bring in that sense of leadership over a keep and armies and stuff like that."

Source: OXM [http://www.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/2014/01/03/is-dragon-age-inquisition-back-on-track-on-ps4-biowares-rpg-series-fight-back/]


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Legion

Were it so easy
Oct 2, 2008
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As interesting as this sounds, they pretty much said the same thing for Dragon Age 2. "Think like a General, fight like a Spartan" was the tag line they chose for the game and I doubt many would agree that it lived up to it.

Personally it doesn't bother me as long as they get rid of the repetitive wave combat and enemies magically dropping from the ceiling. Those things, as well as the bodies exploding from daggers and disproportionate weapons, were the only parts I particularly disliked about DA2's combat.

It is very interesting to see that they are now allowing for multiple races for the playable character. They were adamant about it being human only in the beginning. I guess they gave into fan demand in the end. Let us hope that this won't result in time being taken from other areas, or simply meaning a different character model.
 

Karadalis

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Apr 26, 2011
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But what about awkward softcore hug scenes between chars? cmon.. tell us more about undie huggy action!

But yeah... Mass effect 3 and DA2 showed that big promises from bioware often fall flat on their nose... or are just blatant ol lies.

I will wait for the first reviews of this game before i make a decision.
 

BloodSquirrel

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Jun 23, 2008
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You know, all of this sound interesting, but I can't shake the feeling that it's being done so begrudgingly as a reaction to DAII failure and Skyrim's success that the people involved won't actually be able to pull it off well. No amount of promises will ever be able to make me as hopefull for this game as three little words would:

"Mike"

"Laidlaw"

"Fired"
 

chaos order

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Jan 27, 2010
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does anyone smell a form of microtransactions being snuck in here? I mean they could add things to keeps that can only be bought and not built. I love the dragon age universe but this game is starting to sound worse and worse from when they announced multiplayer.
 

Rodolphe Kourkenko

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Dec 10, 2012
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Reading this it remind me a lot about DA2 and ME3... "Tactical combat" was used several times for DA2, "leadership over an armie" was ME3.
And the worst of all: they spoke about open world but they already announced that the game will NOT be an open world...
(http://www.vg247.com/2013/09/11/dragon-age-inquisition-isnt-open-world-is-multi-region-says-bioware/).
So they're playing with words again and since they're telling half truth in a part of this interview, announcement, whatever, what prove me they aren't doing the same for the rest ?

For now it'll be a "no buy" with a red flag.
 

Elfgore

Your friendly local nihilist
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Dec 6, 2010
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I'm waiting to buy this game until the reviews come out. They keep promising all these new features and judging by DA2 the promises might not hold true.

If they do use this and it works it would be awesome. I loved being a lord in Awakening. Could be really cool if they do it even better.
 

Toilet

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Feb 22, 2012
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The question on everyone's lips is whether we can have sex with my captured enemies after talking with them a handful of times? I want to go hilt deep into my captured elf foe and spray the content of my phylactery within them.
 

loa

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Jan 28, 2012
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Oh I remember in baldurs gate 2 you could have a castle but I heavily doubt they'll ever get back to the level of expansiveness baldurs gate 2 had in categories other than talking about it.
 

Sniper Team 4

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Apr 28, 2010
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Well I'm excited for this game, and appear to be the only one. The only thing I'm worried about is that the story is going to solely focus on the Mage Templar war, and I find that extremely boring. However, the last trailer I watched implied that what I've been hoping will happen does indeed happen: the Veil breaks, stuff gets real bad real fast.
Based on the DLC for Dragon Age II, I think the Dragon Age team learned their lessons from the criticism that game got. So my hopes are raised.

Of course, if this game turns out to be like Mass Effect 3, with an ending that just destroys the entire series, then I will be done with BioWare games.
 

james.sponge

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Mar 4, 2013
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loa said:
Oh I remember in baldurs gate 2 you could have a castle but I heavily doubt they'll ever get back to the level of expansiveness baldurs gate 2 had in categories other than talking about it.
If I remember correctly BG allowed you to have different keeps depending on your class, castle was reserved for the warrior and priests, thieves, mages and druids had different options, so yeah after more than a decade BG2 is still the best rpg experience :D.
 

Ed130 The Vanguard

(Insert witty quote here)
Sep 10, 2008
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wombat_of_war said:
bioware have gone from an automatic preorder for me to a wait and see reviews and issues that crop up at release before i even think about getting it and then maybe on a steam sale later on
Its published by EA so there won't be any Steam Sales featuring it.

Or any sort of meaningful sales in general.
 

Sigmund Av Volsung

Hella noided
Dec 11, 2009
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I don't like that the features they keep talking about are sandbox-centric ones.

I don't mind freedom in an RPG, but I have a bad feeling that because of keeps, exploration etc. the game will end up thinly spread and might go the way that ACIII did in comparison to its predecessors; severely lacking in depth or meaning to the core mechanics.

That's just me being cynical, but whenever a dev starts talking about sandbox features in what has been a linear series of games, I can't help but feel that they are focusing less on improving their mistakes and more on trying to compete with Skyrim.
 

1337mokro

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Dec 24, 2008
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Do you want to upgrade your keep with this nice Darkspawn skin rug? That will be 15$ please!

EA is going to micro-transaction the shit out those keeps. I am slightly hopeful that Bioware might finally get it's head out of it's ass, trim the enormous blobs of fat from it's development team and restructure itself as an actually competent RPG developer once more.

Though not likely because the same people working on Dragon Age 2 are working on Dragon Age 3. At least they are actually taking their time instead of doing another 16 month hatchet job and literally crapping out a sequel. I'll see what it is when it releases and watch the first poor sucker's rage video on youtube.

Also stop giving Mark shit for Dragon Age 2. The man was literally asked to do a rush hack job and he did exactly that, nobody could have made Dragon Age 2 anything worth even half the praise that it's predecessors got. If DA3 sucks just as bad then you can lay into the guy, but not for making shovelware when the express order was to make shovelware.
 

Shamanic Rhythm

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Dec 6, 2009
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Serious question: has anyone played an RPG where 'managing a castle' was anything other than a gimmick?
There wasn't much you could do with the BG2 keeps, although considering what gen that game was from I was just impressed they included them, and had options for different classes. The keep you babysit in NWN2 had more stuff to do, but it all boiled down to being a massive money sink to prepare for the final missions. Worse, there was no logical way to make it profitable on its own: it was like playing a text version of Stronghold.
 

Aggieknight

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Dec 6, 2009
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"Managing your keeps" sounds a bit too much like "Building your galactic armada" from ME3...and that was a stupidly basic mechanic of filling a bar to enable you to watch different colored lights.

I really want to be excited about this game, but Bioware/EA has burned me to much.
 

Linksmash

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Sep 9, 2013
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To be honest if they had every option under the sun but don't go back to the tactical depth of the first one ( A great deal of which could be massively altered by the characters build, also absent from the second) i'm going to be dissapointed.